'My colleague's filthy humour is bothering me'

He is overpowering most of the time and keeps cracking dirty sex jokes. The worst part is some of my colleagues even laugh at them and encourage his filthy humour. How do I tackle this menace?— Mahesh

Illustration/ Amit Bandre

Dear Mahesh, The more you react and display your irritation to his filthy jokes, the more he will go around cracking them. Just ignore them. When a joke session is going on, take a coffee break or just step away from your workstation. There are many guys who feel cracking such jokes is a guy thing. They get a strange kick out of it. As the others are joining in the fun, you will be labelled as a prude. So it is better to live and let live. Meanwhile find someone else in office who too feels offended by his jokes. If there are quite a few, you can approach the HR department to tell him to go easy on his jokes.